And then along come those less-than-darling buds of May, the politicians.

For 20 years we have had the budget in May. Each year it seems to take on a more cacophonous shrillness, and an urgency fuelled by cries that we are closer to the precipice than we ever imagined. Before these past 20 years it was delivered in winter, which seems a much more appropriate time for the evocation of the dark arts of magic and illusion brewing and bubbling forth from statistics. Lies, damn lies and statistics – they’re all part of the conjuring cauldron.

There was a time when the only news from budgets was: ‘‘BEER, CIGS, PETROL UP! It being winter, people were already hunkered down from the cold, trying not to let their spirits get any lower. But what was that? Oh yes, spirits up too! It wasn’t true of course, but it seemed to be all that mattered on the news posters. And now we have petrol up again. What next, knighthoods?

The move from bare-limbed August to autumn was the result of a suggestion by the then treasurer John Dawkins during his farewell speech in 1993. The first treasurer to present a budget earlier in the year was Ralph Willis, who proposed that the budget would ‘‘maximise economic growth, reduce unemployment (which stood at 10.3 per cent, from a high of 11), promote social justice; and reduce the budget deficit, without increasing taxes’’. Twenty years ago there was also talk of a levy, a jobs levy, to pay for parts of the Working Nation strategy. It was dropped. And now a debt levy. Any more levies and we would have a flood channel.

Advertisement

The first federal budget was delivered in the spring of 1901 by treasurer Sir George Turner, a former premier of Victoria. In his speech, according to a Treasury summary, Sir George ‘‘stressed the need to avoid ‘extravagant expenditure’, despite the abundant revenues.’’ He became known for "parsimony. According to one story, this extended to drafting his first budget on shaving paper as an economy measure.’’

It is, of course, not known if the nation followed Sir George’s lead in framing company or household budgets with such economy. It was a simpler world back then. It didn’t require much more than transferring sheep – rather the wool off its back – from one side of the ledger to the other. The nation had been riding on the animal’s back for a few years before and would for quite a few more. The phrase was first recorded in 1894, according to the ANU.

We can be sure, however, Joe Hockey has needed more than shaving paper to formulate his first budget. For after all, there must have been all that scribbling, all that semantic exercising of making a word not seem to mean what it is.

It must have been terribly hard not breaking your word, or that of your leader’s. In August last year, Tony Abbott said this: ‘‘We must never leave anyone behind...You could trust us in oppositon and you will be able to trust us in government...The worst deficit is not the budget deficit but the trust deficit. This election is all about trust.’’

Perhaps both men have attention deficit disorder. Still trust has always been a wobbly concept in politics. That was then, this is now sort of thing. It’s not exclusive to one side of the fence. It does raise the question, if every side has to clean up the mess of the other, what’s the use of any of them?

And amongst these gales of assertion, rebuttal, and jousting, in the fading light and autumnal colours, a beautiful time is scarred. May now is the cruellest month.